Sanctuary
by graciebutterfliedgsr
Summary: postep for Law of Gravity. GSR. Sara and Grissom encounter some problems after he returns from sabbatical. COMPLETE.
1. Chapter 1

**Title**: Sanctuary

**Genre**: Angst- with a little romance

**Pairing**: Grissom/Sara

**Rating**: T (high)

**Summary**: Sara deals with her anger over Grissom's sabbatical and reflects on how he has changed her life

**A/N**: This is my first proper fic in a while- don't read it if you want fluff!! Thanks to Nikki for the great beta!

**Spoilers:** Anything up to season seven

**Disclaimer: ** I do not own CSI: Crime Scene Investigation or any of the characters therein. No money was made from the writing of this fic, so please don't sue.

Sara shut the door to her apartment with a bang. Once she had shed her coat and dropped her purse on the kitchen counter, she sighed. This was her sanctuary, the one place that she had always been able to come to when things got too tough and she needed to escape.

After her terrible childhood, where home was a place of violence and shouting, Sara had made everywhere she had lived peaceful and calm. Her apartment in Vegas was the longest she had lived in one place since the death of her father. It showed, for this place was not the haven she needed at the moment. There were too many memories of him. For a year and a half she had practically been living at his house, but here was where everything had started. NO! She would not think of him, she couldn't. Sara had returned to her old apartment after he went to Massachusetts, and brought most of her stuff back with her.

Meeting him in the corridor at work today was not how she had envisaged their first encounter after a month apart. Sara had been unable to stop herself giving him a half smile as he stood there, after four long weeks, but she had escaped as quickly as possible.

Grissom had started to invade the sanctuary of her home. Although Sara had frequently gone out with the others to cafes and diners and sometimes to their houses, she had never had anyone over to her apartment. Then, three years ago, after her almost- DUI- incident, he had driven her home and, much against her better judgement, she had invited him in.

"I'd ask you in for a drink but that seems somewhat inappropriate" she had said. "You want some tea?"

He had acquiesced. Once inside, she had noticed how he glanced around the apartment that he had never seen before, noting the décor and the furniture. She had turned around and handed him the tea, waiting for the inevitable lecture.

"Sara," he had begun. "I want you to take some time off- you know-"

"Yeah, I know I have to see a PEAP councillor, yada, yada," Sara had replied, but with more weariness than anger.

He hadn't lectured her as she had feared. They had talked, quietly, almost as friends. Well- not quite friends- they had never been just friends. He had left a half hour later, and Sara had been too comforted by his conversation to notice that they had been in her apartment. When she had realised, it was too late.

The second time had been after she had blown up at Catherine and Ecklie and been suspended. After a few hours, she had calmed down and distanced herself enough from the case to be able to talk to Grissom. She had attempted to tell him about her parents in the empty, dead, monotone way that she had managed to view them in ever since. However, the fact that she was in her home, the only place she ever allowed herself to break down, and the fact that it was Grissom and he was listening to her wore through her defences.

"It's ok," he had told her, almost hopelessly.

He hadn't fired her. Part of her still couldn't believe that.

A/N: This is the first part of a continuing story- cross-posted at geekfiction. Part Two is also posted there- please let me know if I should update!


	2. Chapter 2

Part Two

The day after Grissom had listened to her past, Sara had been watching daytime television mindlessly flicking through the channels when there had been a knock at the door.

"_Someone's popular today," she had muttered to herself._

It had been Grissom. Sara wasn't that surprised, who else would it have been? What had astonished her was that he was there at all. The day before, when she had started crying, he pulled her down onto the couch next to him and held her while she wept. At first, his arms had been gentle and tentative, as though he was afraid that he would break her, like she was a piece of fragile glass. However, Sara Sidle had been broken a long time ago, and she was still fighting.

Somehow, in the comfort of his arms, she had fallen asleep. For the first time in a very long time she had slept dreamlessly. When she had woken, she was lying on her bed, fully clothed, with a note from Grissom on her nightstand.

_Sara,_

_I'm very sorry, I had to leave, Greg called me with some evidence on a case and I need to speak to Ecklie._ _**Courage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other**__ – Samuel Johnson_

_Grissom_

A knock at the door had brought her out into the living room.

"Come in," Sara had begun, somewhat hesitantly.

When Grissom had explained that he had disobeyed Ecklie's order to fire her, Sara had nearly dropped her tea.

"Why?" she had asked, blankly. Then, "What did Catherine say? I won't-"

" Cath didn't say anything, and I know better than to try to make you do something you don't want, Sara,"

She had almost laughed at that, Sara remembered fondly. He had never said why he hadn't fired her.

After that, things had improved slightly between them. It had just been little things. There had been more laughter, she had worked with him on more cases, and he no longer talked so much to Sofia Curtis, that, don't go down that route, Sidle, she told herself.

Sometimes, there had even been breakfast, but never at her house. Although no longer completely private, but at least hidden, Sara had always found a measure of peace and security there.

The one place that work had never touched her.

Then, so soon after that had been that terrible case at the mental hospital. In her nightmares, Sara could still remember the feel of the ceramic weapon against her throat, pressing down on her. Her terror had melted, though, at the sight of Grissom through the glass. Despite his anguished expression, Sara had felt better. _At least_, she had thought, _at least if I die now I will have said goodbye with my eyes. _

Then, her body had started moving independently to her mind. She had rushed out of the room, away from the insane man behind her, away even from Grissom, wishing for her home.

After that, Sara wasn't sure where they were at. Sometimes there were still meals and jokes and laughter. Occasionally, she would look up and find him watching her, almost protectively. He rarely left her alone at a scene. Yet he was still keeping his distance. Sara had been too scared to ruin their- whatever it was- by pushing further.

Nick's abduction had changed all of that. After Catherine and Warrick had gone in the ambulance with Nick, Grissom had told Ecklie that 'he wanted his guys back'. Sara had not been entirely sure what he meant by that.

When she had arrived home that night? Day? She couldn't remember, the lines being blurred through the drama of the shift, she had forced herself to take off her coat and make tea. Then, just as the kettle beeped, her knees gave way, like she had known that they would. For about ten minutes she had sat there, slumped against the counter, and cried. The tears ran down her face and her body shook:- all of her anger, pain and hurt, washing away.

The first knock at the door didn't move her. The second had forced her up to her feet and propelled her towards it. The third had not been so much a knock as more an attempt to beat down the door by tattooing it.

"Do you want to destroy the door?" she had demanded irritably, without looking at the person in front of her.

The next thing she knew, she had been enveloped in a sudden warm embrace and didn't have to open her eyes to know who it was.

"I love you," he had whispered in her ear, his voice choked with tears. "And I nearly lost you. If it had been you in that coffin- I'd – I'd have lost it completely,"

Sara was roused from her trip down memory lane when there was a knockon the door. With a sigh, Sara rose from the couch and walked over to it. Looking through the spyhole, she called out;

"You have _key_, Grissom,"

TBC?


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer, etc, see first chapter

A/N: Thanks to Nikki for the amazing and fast beta! I also have no idea where this is going, so suggestions welcomed!

"You have a _key_, Grissom," called Sara in exasperation as she opened the door.

He was standing in the doorway, his hands in his pockets and that woebegone expression on his face. Sara stepped backwards to let him in, but he didn't move.

"You weren't at our house," he began, as if that explained everything. Sara wanted to shout at him. With a great strength of will, she replied calmly.

"_Your _house, Grissom. Not my house. Not our house. _Your _house. I haven't shared a house with someone since I was in foster care."

The last part slipped out unintentionally and she winced at her admission. Grissom, however, seemed not to have noticed.

"It's only not your house because you still have this place," he replied, stubbornly.

"So now this is all my fault?" asked Sara. She was aware of her voice and temper rising, and she felt her control over her anger slipping away. _Why, why did he always do that?_ She cursed inwardly._ He'd pick at some tiny detail until she wasn't sure what the original issue had been in the first place. Well, not this time._

"Just come in. There's no need for the neighbours to hear us discuss our living situations," she told him wearily.

Once inside, Grissom stood, awkwardly.

"Er- Sara- I um, don't know why you're mad, you seemed happy to see me at the lab…" he trailed off hopelessly.

"You really don't know? The small fact that you take off for four weeks without bothering to tell me until the day before, or even tell me why? The _tiny_ point that all the communication I get from you is a box with a cocoon in, without a letter, at that?" Forcing herself to reign in her anger, Sara stopped.

Grissom looked shocked as understanding dawned on his face.

"Sara, honey, I didn't go to Williams to get away from _you_!" he seemed truly shocked that she could have thought that. "God, sweetheart, how could you ever think that? I went because work has been getting me down a lot lately, not to leave you. I'm sorry, you know that I'm not used to being in a relationship,"

"No? Really? 'Cos I'm the Queen of good relationships!" she responded, with more sarcasm than she had intended.

His apology was a fair one. Sara didn't, for the life of her, understand why this man could make her fall even more in love with him and exasperate her at the same time. It was maddening.

"I missed you so much," he told her, brokenly. Sara's head snapped up from where it had been intently studying her shoes. His reply had startled her, but so had the pain in his voice. Looking into his eyes, all the breath was knocked from her lungs at the anguish there. Not able to help herself, she reached forward and touched his cheek gently.

When he flinched slightly at the unexpected contact, she said quietly, almost ironically, "Chalk- from plaster," His eyes closed at the reminder of yet another time when he had hurt her.

He pulled her closer to him, but at her slight resistance, he opened his eyes.

"You hurt me, Griss," she whispered. It was not so much her words, or even the tone of her voice, that told him what he had done. It was his sudden realisation that she was using his surname outside of work. Before he could say anything, however, she had pulled away from him.

"It's not so much that you went away; I missed you, far too much than is healthy, I'm sure, and more than I wanted to. I know work has been tough- that miniature killer case, for one thing. You needed to… gain perspective, I suppose would be the right phrase. I just don't know why you didn't even ask me about it. Then when you were gone, why didn't you write? Or call, or e-mail, at least? I presume they have the internet in Massachusetts?" Her sarcasm held no malice, only a strange sort of weary sorrow. "Don't you trust me?"

TBC?

A/N2: Please review if you can- they let me know whether or not I should continue!


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer, etc: see first chapter

A/N: Thank you to Nikki, as always, for the amazing and super-fast beta. Thank you also to everyone who has left me a review, I really appreciate them. Sorry for the slight delay with this chapter, but something in my head starting screaming 'exams! Revise!', so this would put on hold

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­

"Do you trust me, Grissom?" asked Sara.

For a moment he did not reply to her, astonished that she even had to ask.

"Of course I trust you, Sara," said Grissom in disbelief, sitting down next to her on the couch, and taking her hand, a little tentatively.

"Then why did you go to…," Sara forced herself to stop before she could say any more. They were simply going in circles. Just the same as any argument when neither side was prepared to back down, they were just repeating things over and over to no end. " Just go," she told him brokenly, and so quietly he thought that he had misheard her.

"Wh-what?" he asked her, not wanting to trust his ears.

Sara couldn't bring herself to look at him, to look into his eyes and see the pain and hurt that she knew that she would see there as she repeated her words. "Just go, please," she added on the end, in a pleading half-whisper. "I need some time to think, to figure out what I want,"

Grissom didn't reply. He simply let go of her hand and stood up, distancing himself from her, walking away. For a moment when he reached the door, he looked back and opened his mouth to say something, anything, to break the awful silence, but. But he saw the tension in her slim frame as she sat there, how close she was to breaking down and how uncomfortable she was with him being there, in her house, in her home. So he left her there alone without a word.

After he was gone, Sara felt absolutely nothing. Without really noticing, she was aware of the tears beginning to roll down her cheeks. Not bothering to halt their progress, she just sat there, her brain attempting to process what had happened and how to deal with it. Normally, when she was upset, she would retreat into her home, into her private space, sheltered and protected until she was strong again.

However, she was already here and it was in her home that she was hurt, as she had been so often in the past. Restless, she rose from her seat and went to the window, where in the distance she could see the lights of the Strip and the Stratosphere Tower. Down below, in the car park, she saw a familiar Mercedes pulling out of a parking space and driving away.

_Oh, God, what have I done? _she asked herself. Had she just pushed him away? No, no, she hadn't,- couldn't have. She loved him, so much. So much it hurt sometimes, even when he was there with her.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­

Grissom hadn't driven around Vegas aimlessly in a long time. Not, in fact, since the night of Nick's abduction and he had finally told Sara how he felt about her. This time, though, was different. Usually what he would do was drive from his townhouse around Vegas, and then somehow end up outside her apartment building, staring at it, too afraid to go upstairs and talk to her. Now, he was driving away from her, and back into the life he had led before. Or at least, that was what he felt.

In Grissom's head '_I need some time to think_, _to figure what I want,_' only had one meaning, and it wasn't good. She was shutting him out, just as he had done to her for so many years, whenever she had tried to become close to him. He had no idea that it would hurt this much.

This couldn't be happening, he told himself. No way. Things had been going so well with Sara,- better than he could have hoped. He had assumed she would understand why he had gone to Williams. Not to hurt her;- the very opposite! Since he had started seeing Sara, somehow every case hurt him. Every person became someone who was loved or cared for, like he cared for Sara and he kept thinking about how he would feel if it _was_ _her_Sara on the autopsy table. It had been driving him mad.

_No._ A small voice inside his head interrupted his reverie of despair. It was the part of him that had, just that one time, carried his feet up the stairs to her apartment eighteen months ago. Grissom was not going to give up that easily. He couldn't. Losing Sara after having her had been his greatest fear. Now, he was not prepared to let her go.

Abruptly, Grissom turned the car in a sharp U-turn that earned him a resounding blast on the horn from the car behind. Barely even registering it, Grissom backtracked until he was once more sitting in the car park outside her flat, trying to find the courage to go in.

A/N2: This chapter is slightly different because part of it is told from Grissom's POV. Hope you like it and please leave a review to tell me what you think.


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer, etc: See first chapter

A/N: I have major apologies to make. I promised an finish to this fic over the weekend. This wasn't written until Saturday evening. For some reason my e-mail and my beta's were…not compatible. On another note, thanks to Nikki for the fantastic beta! Thank you also to everyone who has left a review. So, I'll stop talking now.

"You came back," It was a statement, not a question.

Sara was standing, for the second time that day in her doorway, looking at Grissom.

"I'm not going to do this, Sara," whispered Grissom, somewhat hoarsely. "I'm not going to lose you without a fight. I can't do that."

"Oh, God, Gil."

Sara felt a rush of guilt as all her anger fell away and she pulled Grissom into a hug. For those few moments, as she wrapped her arms around his neck and he held by her waist, the entire world seemed to fall away. There was nothing except him and her. Sara buried her face in his neck, re acquainting herself with his smell and the feel of his skin on hers. She revelled in his closeness, the feeling of his nearness after four long, endless weeks. Suddenly the fact that he was in her sanctuary didn't seem as unnerving as before. Her fingers lightly traced his jaw line, and the newly grown hair she found there.

"We need to talk properly, don't we?" she murmured, not wanting to break the closeness, the familiar safety of being in his arms.

Grissom murmured something indistinguishable into her hair that sounded like;

"We're not so good at that."

Sara chuckled then, and they broke apart. She led him over to the couch and they sat down, reluctant to leave each other. Unconsciously, she leaned back into his chest with a sigh as he ran his fingers through her hair.

"I've never really talked to you about why I changed my mind, did I?" Grissom asked, quietly.

Sara shook her head. She had wondered, a few times, but had been too wary of shattering her new found contentment to bring it up.

"It wasn't just Nick's abduction, though that was the catalyst," Grissom's voice was quiet, meditative, as though he was working it out himself in his head. "It showed me how short life is. That sounds ridiculous and cliché, but... I don't know. It could have been any of us in that coffin. You. It could have been you, Sara, and all I kept thinking was that I'd never have been able to tell you how I feel. That scared me more than any of the other crap that was holding me back. I believe now, though, that it really started when we had that case at the mental hospital. When you were in that room, you just looked as if you were…saying goodbye," Grissom broke off and Sara turned around to face him, looking straight into his haunted blue eyes.

"I was," she replied simply. That was the longest speech she had ever heard him make and she had no response.

He pulled her tighter close to him. "Just so you know," she breathed into his ear, "If you ever leave me again then you will have used up all your chances."

"Didn't I do that already?" he asked, a hint of humour in his voice.

"Hmmm, maybe. Every time you do something stupid, I think that," Sara replied, only half joking.

"Like when?" Grissom enquired.

"Err… plenty of times before we were together. That thing with the Debbie Marlin case, for example."

Sara felt Grissom flinch against her.

"I never thought you knew about that. I'm sorry."

"I know you are," Sara reached up slightly and placed what was intended to be a gentle kiss on his lips, but he caught her and held her.

Later that night, as they lay curled up in bed together, he asked her tentatively to move in with him. Not just to move in with him, but to buy a house with him. Their own house. Sara said yes, because she realised that she didn't want to have her own sanctuary, she wanted to spend all her time with Grissom, because he was her sanctuary.

A/N2: So, thank you for reading, please leave a review to let me know if you liked it (or not: D)


End file.
